Abstract
An aspect of metacognition associated with broader functional abilities in several clinical conditions, but previously unexamined in autism, is self-assessment (i.e., the ability to accurately self-evaluate one’s own performance). We compared self-assessment between 37 autistic adults without intellectual disability to 39 non-autistic (NA) controls on a series of three general cognitive and three social cognitive tasks. Whereas autistic adults and NA adults did not differ in their self-assessment accuracy on general cognitive tasks, they did on social cognitive tasks, with autistic adults demonstrating lower accuracy. The direction of their inaccuracy was variable (i.e., both over and underestimation), and self-assessment was largely unrelated to their level of social functioning. Over versus underestimation may have different functional implications, and warrants future investigation.
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This study was supported by internal funds awarded to the senior author. The authors would like to thank Kerrianne Morrison for her assistance with data collection and analyses, all participants from both The University of Texas at Dallas and the nonPareil Institute, and the staff at the nonPareil Institute for their assistance with data collection and scheduling.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by KMD, AEP, RAA, and NJS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by KMD and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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DeBrabander, K.M., Pinkham, A.E., Ackerman, R.A. et al. Cognitive and Social Cognitive Self-assessment in Autistic Adults. J Autism Dev Disord 51, 2354–2368 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04722-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04722-x